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In Cost and Vitriol, Race in Arizona Draws Notice

Randy Graf, second from right, a conservative Republican candidate for Arizonas Eighth Congressional District, led in polls before the primary.Credit
Nancy J. Schroeder for The New York Times

TUCSON, Sept. 10 — Unfair tactics. Lying. Spying. And that is just what the Republican candidates are accusing one another of in a Congressional primary here that veteran political watchers are calling wild even by Arizona’s sometimes unconventional standards.

There are primaries in nine states and the District of Columbia on Tuesday, but both parties are closely watching the campaign in the Eighth Congressional District here because it is a swing district and one of a handful nationwide that Democrats think they can capture in their bid to reclaim the House. The candidates have spent more than $2.5 million, making it among the most expensive House races in the country.

The campaign has played out near the border in a state where more people cross illegally than in any other, making immigration a top issue and illuminating a feud among moderates and conservatives in the Republican Party.

The 11 candidates from the two major parties in the primary are battling not only for the right to represent the district but also to lay claim to the general drift of politics in this fast-growing state, which is not as conservative as it used to be.

In some ways, the Eighth District, which covers a vast piece of southeastern Arizona from the liberal-leaning, metropolitan Tucson to the more conservative areas along the Mexican border, seems emblematic. It voted twice for President Bush but also for Janet Napolitano, the popular Democratic governor who is seeking a second term. The district has been represented for 22 years by Jim Kolbe, a moderate Republican who is not seeking re-election.

“A lot of people outside Arizona, because it is the state of Barry Goldwater, think it is a right-wing state,” said Bruce D. Merrill, political scientist and professor of journalism and mass communication at Arizona State University. “The legislature is because they control the primary system, where turnout is low. But the general electorate in Arizona, because of high migration of people from the Midwest and other places, is pretty moderate.”

Mr. Merrill added: “They are two-to-one pro-choice over pro-life, and there is a lot of support of education and sex education in schools. The problem is, do the moderates vote in the proportion that conservatives do?”

Tuesday may provide an answer.

The front-runner in the Republican primary, according to the most recent poll, is Randy Graf, a former professional golfer and state lawmaker who mounted a strong challenge against Mr. Kolbe in 2004. Mr. Graf, a supporter of the Minuteman Project, a civilian border patrol group, has campaigned on a pledge to ensure that illegal immigrants have no path to citizenship and that the border will be further secured.

But so concerned are national Republicans about Mr. Graf, who once sponsored a bill to let patrons carry guns into bars and restaurants (it did not pass), that they have taken the rare step of spending more than $200,000 on advertising endorsing the more moderate Steve Huffman, also a former state representative.

The move, which other Republican candidates have called unfair, apparently stemmed from a belief that Mr. Graf would lose in a general election to the Democratic front-runner, Gabrielle Giffords, a former state senator.

“To have the national party apparatus weigh in on a primary has changed the whole dynamic of the race,” said Stan Barnes, a Republican political consultant in Phoenix who is not representing any of the candidates. “There is a lot at stake and a lot to be lost by the party in terms of its own stature.”

Carl Forti, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, declined to comment on the support for Mr. Huffman, saying the committee did not publicly discuss strategy.

Photo

Steve Huffman, a moderate Republican candidate in the Eighth District, has the support of the national Republican Party.Credit
Nancy J. Schroeder for The New York Times

A recent Arizona Daily Star poll, conducted by Zimmerman and Associates and Marketing Intelligence, showed Ms. Giffords leading her Democratic primary opponents. The poll, released last week, also showed that in a general election matchup, Ms. Giffords would beat Mr. Graf 46 percent to 36 percent, with the rest undecided, and would defeat Mr. Huffman 42 to 39 percent, though with the margin of sampling error it would be a tossup. The poll, which surveyed 800 likely voters from Sept. 1-4, had a margin of sampling error of five percentage points.

The national Democratic Party has made it clear that it would like to see Mr. Graf as the Republican candidate. It has spent nearly $200,000 here, a large part of that for advertisements critical of Mr. Huffman in an effort to help Mr. Graf’s candidacy.

Mr. Huffman, who has been endorsed by Mr. Kolbe, has been forced to prove his conservative credentials — one advertisement showed him crouched in the desert clutching a flashlight as if about to search for migrants — while staying close enough to the center to remain attractive to general election voters.

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Mr. Huffman’s position on immigration is close to President Bush’s, supporting a temporary worker program while advocating more border security. But lately Mr. Huffman has been emphasizing the latter and says he does not support a “path to citizenship” for illegal immigrants.

“Steve Huffman will secure our borders, cut taxes and provide our troops with the tools needed to win the war on terror,” goes the script that campaign workers here read on Sunday as they called hundreds of registered voters.

Mr. Graf has accused Mr. Huffman of a “campaign of lies.’’ Mr. Graf said that Mr. Huffman had falsely accused him of opposing Medicare and had implied that he approved of cross-burning because he opposed as too ambiguous a state bill making burning such symbols a state crime.

On the Democratic side, Ms. Giffords, who said she was a Republican until 1999, has sought to present a moderate face. She projected an air of calm as she shook hands on Sunday morning with the friendly crowd at a socially progressive church she had visited often.

She favors abortion rights but opposes the death penalty, a switch from a few years ago. She supports embryonic stem cell research.

In an interview, she suggested she would stand a better chance of working with opposing parties than Mr. Graf would.

“I am able to talk to independents and Republicans about the same issues we Democrats care about,” Ms. Giffords said, noting she had won legislative elections in districts that leaned Republican.

She faces four opponents, including Patty Weiss, a former television anchorwoman with high name recognition, who have squabbled over their levels of experience but without the vitriol of the Republicans.

Mr. Barnes, the Republican consultant, said, “There will be a collective sigh of relief on both sides of the aisle after this primary is over.”

Correction: Sept. 18, 2006

Because of an editing error, an article last Monday about the campaign for the Eighth Congressional District in Arizona referred incorrectly to Bruce D. Merrill, who described Arizona voters as moderate. He is a political scientist and professor of journalism and mass communication, not a political science professor, at Arizona State University.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: In Cost and Vitriol, Race In Arizona Draws Notice. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe